Wednesday Wondering 1.10.24 - Plastistones

In 2024, 50 nations are expected to hold elections, including India, the USA, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia. The largest number of humans participating in democracy globally…ever? When the countries responsible for 60%+ of the world’s economic output are voting this close together, expect stuff to get weird on the internet. Really weird. Like, for seriousies, even more weird than the run up to 2016. But first, the stuff that has me up at night this week.

A Strange Plastic Rock Has Ominously Invaded 5 Continents (Popular Mechanics) We’ve produced so much plastic that the planet’s geology textbooks now need an update. A new form of sedimentary rock has been discovered, called plastistone. 65 million years ago, we had the Paleocene epoch of time. I wonder if the planet will have a Plasticene epoch, that sentient Roaches and Keith Richards will remark about, 30 million years from now.

Hundreds of Alaska Airlines, United flights remain canceled Monday after Boeing 737 Max 9 groundings (NBC News) & Boeing Supplier Ignored Warnings Of “Excessive Amount Of Defects,” Former Employees Allege (Lever News) Why do we believe a single word Boeing excretes. To anyone trying to make planes, “explosive decompression” is the name of a dubstep party, not a thing your passengers roll the dice on when they fly to Milwaukee on business. Of course, the voice recorder data on the 737Max 9 that the door blew out on, was overwritten. And if you’re wondering how the 737Max 7 approval process is going, pilots that use the anti-ice system for more than five minutes risk the engine inlets heating up so badly that the housing could break apart and smash into the plane’s windows. You know what did survive that door blow out? An iPhone that fell 16,000 feet, so if you lost one on the flight, it still works!

American Cops Killed 1261 People in 2023 (Surviving Tomorrow) Cops kill. This needs to be a non-controversial point in American politics. They do so, without sanction or a jury verdict, and do so without consequence. Convictions or justice for the civilian family? Forget it, 98.1% haven’t even been charged.

The fleecing of America’s hourly workers (Popular Information) Theft of wages en masse, affecting hundreds or thousands of workers, will always be worse than a single person or “gang” of thieves, stealing from big box retailers or insured Duane Reades. Seriously, wage theft was estimated at $50 billion a year…in 2014. Just FYI, in Australia, the punishment for wage theft is up to $630k FOR EACH EMPLOYEE.

Enshittification is the 2023 Word of the Year (American Dialect Society) & The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok (Wired) Meta gradually makes its feed less useful and more spammy. Amazon Prime charges 2 bucks more for the same ad-free tier. Twitter reintroduces political ads and previously-banned voices. Even TikTok started getting materially worse over the last year for users. The process has been well documented by Cory Doctorow, and given what we’re going to see during the election(s), it’s a term we should all be familiar with.

The Insulin Shift (American Prospect) Through a bunch of policy wonk minutiae, the Democrats figured out how to force Insulin prices down, without price controls or weird hearings. This is a rare triumph for the Biden administration, that I’m surprised we haven’t heard anyone touting, as it is an unabashed win.

Jamie Raskin Uncovers Proof Of Trump's Foreign Bribes (Off Message) Dig for the dirt, find the dirt, expose the dirt. Norms don’t matter for insurrectionists. Selling the presidency for peanuts should piss off all those America First people. Let me know if they say anything.

North Korea was Responsible for Over $600M in Crypto Thefts Last Year (CoinDesk) While the legitimate use cases for crypto continue to dwindle, North Korea sure loves stealing the stuff. A lot easier to transport than cash, so it makes sense they’re responsible for one out of three crypto hacks and scams in 2023.

ChatGPT bombs test on diagnosing kids’ medical cases with 83% error rate (Ars Technica) Really didn’t think this needed to be said but, Do Not Use ChatGPT to Diagnose Illnesses. Yours or the ones your children bring home. Please.

So you want to de-bog yourself (Experimental History) The best “unstick yourself” basket of fallacies and behavioral ticks we all use to procrastinate or psyche ourselves out. Personal favorites are declining the dragon, the infinite effort illusion, and super surveillance.

Quote of the week

There are still many more days of failure ahead, whole seasons of failure, things will go terribly wrong, you will have huge disappointments, but you have to prepare for that, you have to expect it and be resolute and follow your own path. ~Anton Chekhov

Poem of the week 

Vibe of the week

Soothe yourself into the late week with this dreamy remix of Le Youth’s amazing melodic house track.

Keep your head up,tn